🎧 Questlove, Sly Stone & the Anxiety of SuccessA childhood memory, a haunting bass line, and a documentary years in the making about a brilliant and troubled artist: 'I became hyper-obsessed'
Subscribe on Apple PodcastsThe first time Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson encountered the music of Sly and the Family Stone, he was 2 and his eyes were full of soap. “ I had a massive Afro, and because I didn’t know that you should keep your eyes closed when you’re getting your hair washed, my eyes opened,” recalls the Philadelphia native, now 54. He doesn’t know how he wound up in the family room, but he has a vivid memory of his father flushing out his eyes with water while the Sly and the Family Stone song “Just Like a Baby” played on the family stereo. “ It’s like out of a Quentin Tarantino film — a slow pan to that American flag record cover. That was the only thing I was concentrating on, hearing this bass line — boom, boom, boom, boom.” That combination of cinematic references and deep musical knowledge pretty neatly sums up how Questlove has become both one of the most famous and prolific working musicians and an incredibly successful documentary filmmaker. His debut feature, Summer of Soul, won the top documentary award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 before going on to win the best documentary Oscar, and he’s since found himself involved as a producer in a wide range of film projects. As Questlove puts it, in the wake of Summer of Soul’s success, “it was like the opposite of Oprah. Instead of ‘You get a car, you get a car,’ it was like, ‘You get this project and that project.’”  One of those projects, which he also co-directed, is the captivating Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, which debuted on NBC in February as part of Saturday Night Live’s extensive 50th anniversary celebrations. Still, even more personal is his film about Sly Stone, which turned out to be about much more than one man. Titled Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), the film is the story of the band and its mercurial leader, but also explores the unique challenges faced by so many other Black artists in the public eye. Through interviews with musicians like D’Angelo and Andre 3000 as well as members of Sly and the Family Stone, Questlove reframes the story of Sly Stone’s rise and fall as being much more about his brilliance than his well-publicized struggles. “ I just became hyper-obsessed to know what happened in Sly’s life between 1970 and 1971 that caused him to make a living suicide record,” Questlove says, referring to the dark tone of There’s a Riot Goin’ On — the exact Sly and the Family Stone album he remembered from childhood. Questlove had agreed to make the Sly documentary before Summer of Soul was even released. After that film’s massive success, he found himself relating more than ever to Sly Stone’s sense of anxiety while at the peak of his career. “Once I had to go through it, then I understood what Sly felt like in 1970, once he became king of the hill,” Questlove tells me. Hear our whole conversation on today’s special weekend edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast, one of several we’ll be sharing between now and when Emmy nominations voting ends on June 23. As always, I’d love to hear from you: katey@theankler.com
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🎧 Questlove, Sly Stone & the Anxiety of Success
May 31, 2025
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